Angele Ellis: “I lived in the dark” | In Grace Notes, Naomi Shihab Nye finds the music in poems about families and the incidents and accidents of personal history
All poetry begins in song, as Naomi Shihab Nye reminds the reader, starting with the title of her latest collection, 117 mostly brief free verse poems that like songs, are both accessible and mysterious.
Patricia Nugent: No Time for Memes
There is a current meme imploring us not to lose friends over politics. This is becoming impossible for me. I would not have been able to continue a friendship with someone who began wearing a swastika armband in the late 1930s.
Tony Gloeggler: Down by an Old Mill Where a Big Part of Your Heart Lives
…you and Jesse
have a gift. You can both stop time.
He’s autistic and you love the kid,
who’s now a man.
LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN: OUR NEARLY $1 TRILLION MILITARY BUDGET WON’T MAKE US SAFER
Congress is spending on the military like it’s World War III. Diverting that money to jobs, health care, and the climate would make us far safer.
Barbara Crooker: Car Hop
I made seventy-five cents an hour, plus tips. All those shiny quarters. Some went down the throat of the jukebox—96 Tears, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, Reach Out / I’ll Be There.
David Hartsough: Finding joy in resistance and prison
As she begins a 229-day prison sentence in Germany, Catholic Worker Susan Crane, age 80, talks about why she has devoted her life to resisting nuclear weapons.
Michael Simms: Politics as a Spiritual Practice
Those of us who wish to follow a spiritual path cannot ignore the malevolent policies of our government.
Dane Cervine: Holography
this is what Jeannie’s lover felt—the empty year
reeling out of orbit, no gravity, lost
in a centerless universe blown wide
Allen Ginsberg: A Supermarket in California
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
Noam Chomsky: What ChatGPT Is Really Good For
The subset of artificial intelligence known as Large Language Models can’t tell us anything about human language learning, but it excels at misleading the uninformed.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Before I Was A Gazan
I was a boy
and my homework was missing,
paper with numbers on it,
stacked and lined
Brett Wilkins: UN to Warn Half a Million Gazans Facing ‘Catastrophic’ Food Insecurity
“The international community must apply relentless pressure to achieve a cease-fire and ensure sustained humanitarian access now,” said one advocate.
Georgia Jensen: Two Years After Dobbs, the Fight Goes On
The reproductive rights landscape is bleak, but there are still ways to fight for abortion access.
Matthew Carey Salyer: Carrier
Catholicschoolboys
fret as I once did like dappled stones
in their own fists. Scuffed wingtips. My ilk.
